


"Reunited, And It Feels So Doomed!"

by touchstoneaf



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics 1998), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Adult Language, Biting, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluffy/Comedy, Gift Fic, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Lighthearted, Post-Series, Romance, Sexual Situations, barely if you squint anyway, blood-play, i will not be judged, minor comics inclusion, porn with plot of some sort, this is just plain schmoop, with a tiny bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28608246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchstoneaf/pseuds/touchstoneaf
Summary: What the hell were the ex-Cordettes thinking, inviting the surviving 1999 Razorbacks to a freaking High School Reunion?!Were there even enough surviving students to have a reunion?More importantly, could Buffy go to such a thing and have it not be a disaster?  For one, she'd have to convince them all she was in a long-term relationship without Spike there, which, yeah, right.  Like they were going to believe that.  (She'd ask Spike for a lot, but going to something like this?  An even bigger tsha, right!)Two... Wil and Xan were right.  There'd probably be monsters.The whole thing was doomed.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers, Willow/Other, Xander/Other
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	"Reunited, And It Feels So Doomed!"

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a Secret Santa prezzie for a fellow EFer, so I had to wait till the holidays were over to post it over here.  
> Hope you all enjoy!!! Many thanks, as always, to wolf_shadoe as ever, for betaing pretty much everything I throw her way promptly and enthusiastically, because she's awesome like that!
> 
> **Formatting Note:** For anyone who’s never read me before, I do a weird thing. Or, at least, it’s weird nowadays. I use an old fanfic convention from long ago because I'm ancient, and we didn't used to have access to italics in the days when I used to fic. Can't break the habit now, I'm just too old and it looks weird for me without it. Character thoughts look like this in my stories: /Blah blah blah./
> 
> **Disclaimer:** All characters property of Joss Whedon, damn his brilliant, confusing soul. And Mutant Enemy. And apparently some people at, I guess, Fox, now? (Who can even keep track anymore. I’m still half-stuck in the WB/CW/UPN confusion.) All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners, yadda and blah. (OCs if any are MINE, ALL MINE!) I am in no way associated with Joss, Mutant Enemy, UPN, Fox, or any other media franchise. I intend no infringement. I intend sexy shenanigans and JUSTICE FOR SPUFFY!
> 
> **Pairing(s):** This one’s only SPUFFY, it being a very ship-in-a-bottle one-shot. It doesn’t delve into anyone else, really, except for faint hints of a pairing with Dawn that is part of other headcanons, and which I thus won’t spoil here (and that Wil and Xander are happy in their lives, with people of some sort). 
> 
> **Rating:** Adult. This is a Secret Santa, and Adult was a request. Not that I have any problem with that!!! (Nor do Spuffy. Ever, in my experience.)
> 
> **Author’s Note / Dedication:** This one vaguely fits into my mental continuity for my post-Chosen Spuffy stuff, since I don’t know how not to fit any post-Chosen into that continuity. However, as previously stated, this one is a Secret Santa project (not sure if that person is on AO3/wants to be noted on here), and thus doesn't delve very deeply into other headcanons (except inside my own silly brain), though folks can read into it as if it does, if they want to. (If you do, though, wish to do so, you can see some spoilers for the future of Spuffy in the **Souls In Bondage** series. You know. If you wanna. *g*) 
> 
> It's also more completely unapologetic porn-with-schmoop, because apparently when I do post-series one-shots, they're all, without fail, made of candy-floss and sweet-nothings and smut. This one has something that could be thinly-excused as hurt-comfort, if you're EXCEEDINGLY liberal in your definitions. And you squint. LOL. I dunno. The idea just fell out.

**REUNION SCHMOOP (Like, for real):  
**  
  
“Are they actually  _ serious?” _ Buffy demanded, flinging down the paper she’d been perusing onto the coffee table.

Spike glanced up from his cruise through the BBC option, noted her disgusted expression, and briefly abandoned the search for decent footie to lean back and study his Slayer in more careful depth. “Serious about what, pet?” he queried in cautious tones. It didn’t do to prod too closely when Buffy was in a snit. She might just take his bollocks off for him if he did.

She shot him a poisonous glance; though, luckily, one meant for other tossers than him, he thought. “The idiots over at the nostalgia committee or whatever the hell they call themselves! I mean, for God’s sake, only about two-thirds of us even  _ survived _ our high school experience, much less want to remember it enough to  _ celebrate _ the stupid thing!” 

Her hands were planted on her hips now, and her eyes were afire. She was a sight to behold when she was like this. Which was, no doubt, part of the reason why he failed to catch up to the subject at hand for far too long. “Celebrate…” he parroted slowly, at a loss. How the fuck was he supposed to follow whatever the bloody hell she was grousing about when she had to go about looking so damned sexy and making his jeans tight just standing there…

Of course, unbidden arousal at her state was the wrong way to go, and her ire swung on him.  _ “Seriously _ , Spike? Now is not the time to get horny over my irritation. That complete airhead Shanice Deitrick and her stupid dumbass bestie Katherine Wexford got together with Eric Singleton and decided to put together a freaking  _ reunion _ for the Sunnydale High Class of ‘99! As if we should even be  _ considering _ such an asinine suggestion! We don’t even have a  _ town _ to go back to for something like that! And, like, half of our class is  _ dead! God, _ are they the most insensitive bitches in the entire  _ universe? _ I mean, two of their pack of numbskulls died in the assault on the Mayor... Gwen Ditchik and that other idiot, what was her name… Aphrodesia.” One hand was waving about her head now, as her ire reached new heights. “I mean, as if that’s even a real name, right?”

Spike opened his mouth to get a word in edgewise, but his incensed Slayer cut him off with a slash of her hand. “Don’t answer that. They were Cordettes. They’re all fake, insensitive bitches. No reason to expect any of ‘em to grow out of it. I mean, you dated freaking  _ Harmony _ …”

Spike winced and shut his mouth. Best not to dip a toe into this conversation at all, now that Harm had entered into the running. Buffy’s last run-in with his former had gone well enough, considering, but he really didn’t need the headache that might come of defending the bimbo. Not that there was any real reason for him to do so, a’ course.

“And, I mean, sure, the queen bitch herself eventually turned into something worth talking about, but the rest of ‘em…” Buffy threw up her hands. “And, wheedling  _ Eric _ into it? I mean, sure, he’s weak as heck, but jeez! He was besties with Larry Blaisdell!  _ Larry! _ He died a  _ hero, _ going up against all those idiot fledges that charged us during the whole Mayor thing. And he was practically  _ brothers _ with Mark whats-his-name; the one who got staked by Xander during that one… well, stake-out over at Shady Rest junior year, and…”

Spike cleared his throat, wondering whether he should—or could, safely—interrupt at this point, or should he just back out slowly and leave her to harangue an empty chair. After all, it didn’t seem she needed him at all for this bit of venting. /But we took each other for better or worse and that, whether we actually said it in front of anyone who matters. S’pose risking a bit of flying crockery counts, innit?/ “Ah, maybe they wanted to do it in a sort of ‘in remembrance of the fallen’ sort of thing?” he put in tentatively.

Buffy whirled on him, her face a study in horrified irritation. “Oh, with that bunch you  _ gotta _ know it’s more a serious exercise in pretending nothing bad ever happened at Sunnydale High. E-ver.” Out of nowhere she affected the most ditzy possible expression and tone he had ever remotely heard from her, widened her eyes until he thought they might fall right the fuck out of her head, batted her lashes winningly, and gasped, with hand to her breast, “Like, for  _ real! _ Because we’re the  _ best! _ Rah rah rah, go Razorbacks!”

A snort of mirth escaped Spike before he could manage to catch it, hold it in. Sometimes his girl was the utter limit; especially when she poked fun at people who, he knew, reminded her of someone she used to be, and thus had no time for. 

At his brief guffaw, Buffy’s eyes glared at him. Her frown was spreading, and, /Aw, hell. In for a penny, I reckon./ “Do you just wanna have a nice rough and tumble and have it over, Love? Sounds like you need the chance to just beat it out of the world…” He tried a smirk, well-aware he was taking his proverbial life in his hands saying it, but what the hell. He unlived for danger, and all that shite. /And for you./ “Maybe forget you used to be a cheerleader as well?”

The moment hung on a thread. He knew he’d risked being leapt upon… but that not only went with the territory, and honestly? It was but part of the fun of living with Buffy. Kept things interesting, their sparring. Was one of the main reasons he was fool enough to go on goading his Slayer when she was in such a state; otherwise he’d just stick to letting them be loving all the time. 

Not that he minded that they were mostly loving, nowadays. It was wonderful. Fantastic, fulfilled parts of him that had starved for that sort of thing since before his second birth… but they  _ were _ a Slayer and a vampire. A little rough and tumble was never going to go amiss in their relationship, whatever the provocation. 

The pendulum swung, and she was narrowing her eyes at him. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“Well, yeah.”

She stared him up and down for a moment, then switched to looking mildly perturbed as she crossed her arms. That one tiny line appearing fetchingly between her brows. “Why? You wanna get into it or something?”

“Always,” he answered immediately, and lifted a brow. “But in this case…” He fixed her with a pointed look, one she couldn’t escape. After all these years, he knew how to pin her to the sticking place with a glance. She still hated it, sometimes, but she often told him it was the reason she kept him around. 

Well, that and per her assertions, he was damn good in bed. Which, he’d always swiftly assured her, was pretty easy to manage when your partner tended to be equally gymnastic and indefatigable… /And fucking inventive, let us not forget./ Buffy was a bit of a menace in bed these days, the things she came up with. That time with the fucking feather was just one such occasion, and in point of fact he was still recovering from the strain in his groin from fighting the bonds, the mad bint. 

She could hold him ensorcelled until the end of time. But that was neither here nor there. “I’m wondering if maybe you might just be horrified to realize it’s been ten bloody years since you graduated, Buffy,” he pointed out softly.

She stilled, turning briefly to stone… then sighed and abruptly deflated. “Damn you.”

“Doesn’t seem all that long ago, does it.” 

It wasn’t posed as a question, and she didn’t take it as one. Instead she blew out another breath, one that sounded defeated, and turned around to fling herself down onto his lap. 

He caught her by dint of long-practiced instinct, cradled her in his arms when she turned, curled into his body to bury her nose in his throat, her hands folding into the collar of his tee. She’d end up fondling it till it was loose and out of shape, and oh well. There was a reason he had a wealth of the things put by. His quicksilver Slayer had informed him more than once that if he wasn’t wearing the handle of his useful, collared shirts, it was on him what happened to the others. Which was fair, and he’d be damned if he’d ever say he regretted it when she handled him. For any reason. “Time does fly, pet,” he murmured into the crown of her head, and drew in a long, stabilizing whiff of her scent. Bloody hell. That was  _ home _ , it was. 

She pulled a face against his adam’s apple, one he could feel, and sighed again. “It does, and it doesn’t. Seem like forever ago, I mean. You know, it was literally  _ another life _ for me…”

He knew. Christ, how he knew it. “Yeah, Love.” It came out rough; but then, he’d probably never quite get past the memory of seeing her dead and gone from him. Of living through it; him and the Bit. The rest of them, as well; but him and Niblet, mostly, just clinging to one another to survive the worst stretch of time imaginable, and no knowing then if it would ever end. /That we have you back—that  _ I _ have you back—bloody hell, that’s worth everything we’ve been through since.  _ Everything _ ./

His hand rose to slide up along her spine, cupped the back of her neck, lay there for a moment to cool her where she liked it best when she got this heated, then slid down the tail of her hair, grown out long again since the business with Angel and the doorway. “I remember how it is,” he went on in quiet tones, commiserating as best he could. “Both when I died the first time and came back into the other life… and the last time, after goin’ out. Comin’ back courtesy of the Liz Taylor collection definitely made a lot of things fade out of importance, seem damnably far away.” He leaned back and away a bit to try to get a glimpse of her face, but couldn’t read her expression, or anything much past the top of her head and the curve of her brows. “Some things, though, stayed the same,” he reminded her. “Always.”

“Yeah,” she answered, and tugged him close again by the handle of his collar. “The important things.” She shook her head against his chin. “Which…  _ This _ isn’t one of them. I just… Who would even  _ think _ of being like, ‘Oh, yay, high school on the hellmouth was such a party; we should all get together and remember it with the ten people who’re still alive. Even though none of us even talked to each other back then, much less since, since some of us totally hated each other; and then, I dunno… have drinks?” One of her hands came loose from his shirt to wave around in the air once more. “Show off how wonderful our lives are now, and dance to bad music from 1996, and…’”

He couldn’t quite stopper the chuckle that wandered up his throat at that, and she cut herself off to push off from his chest. He was transfixed with an almighty glare. “This is so not the time to agree with me about the music, Spike. I know your opinion already, okay?”

Alright, now he was offended on behalf of his past self. “Oi! I went with you to that soddin’ club every time you remotely permitted me to sit in, listened to that shite, bobbed m’ head…”

She narrowed her eyes at him till he was trapped, making it clear she’d smelled a rat. “And hated every minute of it that wasn’t spent eating a student, or a blooming onion, or fingering me on the balcony…”

“Well…” She rather had a point there, didn’t she? And most of the time he had been too cool to do much head-bobbing, so if she were to corner him on that bit of prevarication…

She poked one of her fingers at his chest in clear condemnation. “Don’t even lie. We all know why you were there, and it wasn’t for the tunes.”

He grinned broadly at her, showing all of his teeth. “So, I liked watching you dance. And making out with you.” He drew in a deep, theatrical breath, let his eyes flutter briefly closed in an ecstasy that wasn’t entirely feigned. “And  _ hunting _ you…”

When he reopened them, it was to see her rolling hers at him. “Or dressing in freaking olive, like a dope, and trying to have a conversation with me about the recent remodel, because what?”

“Hey, I was trying!”

She exhaled again, sounding like a pricked balloon, and flopped back against his chest. “I know. And I appreciate it in retrospect. But anyway, ugh. Even though I still maintain that nineties and early two-thousands music is way better than the crap we hear on the radio now… And don’t grumble at me. I know we all like the stuff we like because it’s ‘our music’, or whatever, but I think it was actually, like, objectively better.” Her voice dropped to a murmur of discontent. “I mean, at least there was more than one genre…”

Spike held up one hand to forestall further protestations. “Alright. I’ll give you that much. There’s been a bottleneck in Pop these days. Gotta go Indie to get anything decent…”

“Glad we can agree on something…”

“It happens on occasion.”

She dropped into a smile he could hear, good humor halfway restored, and kissed his throat. “On a lot of occasions.” Moving slightly away once more, she fixed her hands on his wrists for anchorage and did some sort of yoga move, leaning far back on the strength of her sexy-as-fuck abs. Then, still clinging to his forearms, she shifted so that she was straddling his lap. Which, by the way, was a move highly approved by the Anglo-American vampire league, membership one. At which point she scooted a little closer, an alteration of proximity to which his previously-checked-out cock took a marked resurgence of interest. “Real talk, though,” she broke into his prick’s train of thought. “What if I went to this stupid-ass thing? Would you actually put up with being my escort?”

He blinked at her, taken aback by the odd note in the back of her voice, the flare of uncertainty he felt around the edges of their blood-link. “Why the bloody hell wouldn’t I? I’ve gone with you into the lion’s den to fight how many big bads? What’s a few former high school prats?” He grinned and slipped a palm behind her arse to tug her still closer, fingers cradling her lovely bum. When she didn’t slug him for it, he loosed the right hand to fondle the other side and drag her in, seat her over his erection. Which, it must be said, was now a cheerful participant in proceedings, the bloody stupid, mindless thing. “No one’s gonna give my girl a rough night without me at her back, yeah? Aside from the fact that, knowing your luck, there’d probably be a sodding Fyarl attack or summat, and you’ll need me there to watch your left.”

“Right?” Only moments later, she’d gone distant again, which was odd. Normally by this point in things, Buffy would rock a little to give him a thrill, let him know she’d caught his preoccupation; tease him a bit. That, or at least give him a pointed, coy look to let him know he’d have to wait for it. Shoot him a distracted, if amused, ‘Down, boy’; something along those lines. This time she did neither, which only went to show how much more fucked off she was over this business than she was letting on. Her eyes were remote as she shrugged a bit diffidently, gaze sliding away from his. “I just figured… it’s really not your kinda thing, you know? Which… If you weren’t gonna come with me, I so wasn’t gonna go, and do the whole, ‘Yeah, I have this great guy. What? No, he couldn’t make it.’ I mean, like they’d believe me. That’s so the oldest line in the book, even before they all thought I was in a cult or whatever…”

/Oh. Oh hell./ Rolling his eyes so hard they almost fell backward to rattle about in his skull, Spike scoffed. “Was that what this whole soddin’ blowup was about? Feelin’ trapped about goin’ to the idiot thing without me, because you think they’d believe you were still some sort of solo artist?” And here she was the one always calling him a dope. “Christ, pet, we’ve been together how long now? Of all the things I’ve done with and for you, you think I’d shy away from…”

“I’m not trying to make you anything you’re not,” she informed him starkly. “I’ve never wanted that.”

Which was the plain, unvarnished truth. She might have at one point  _ resented _ what he was, because in her mind it meant she couldn’t be with him—at least according to the beliefs she had had to hold at the time, or fly apart within herself—but she had never demanded he change. Hell; for too bloody long she had refused to believe he  _ could _ . All the change he had undertaken had been under his own steam, full stop.

Which meant it was on him to do something domesticated like this, as well. And Christ knew he’d do a lot worse than spend a night at a bloody lame, nineties-themed party for her sake. Fuck; he’d watched over sodding  _ Xander _ for her! This was naught. “Buffy,” he began, amazed that she’d think this was such a big bloody deal, “why do you…”

Apparently she took his opener entirely the opposite way he meant it, though; as if he were saying she oughtn’t to feel she owed the blighters any of her time or somesuch. “You have  _ no _ idea how they thought of me back then, Spike,” his Slayer broke in to inform him, sounding agonized. She trod right over his words, her tones pained, and her eyes snapped back to his, furious and frustrated and brimming with some sort of ancient, strange hurt. “I  _ saved _ them. Every night, and they just…” She shrugged helplessly, looking down into her hands. “I was this pariah. They either thought I was a lesbian, or…”

He had to turn this around. He hated when his girl felt any pain at all, though thank god it usually wasn’t him caused it anymore. “Well, considerin’ the business with Faith,” he broke into her harangue, “I have no clue whatsoever why they’d ever think…”

Recovering abruptly, she socked him hard on the bicep. Which he’d expected, so he didn’t flinch, only grinned at her by way of tempting another roundhouse. She rolled her eyes back at him, old hurt vanished in lieu of irritation.  _ “Or,” _ she went on firmly, “they thought I was Amish or something…”

“Fair enough, all the crosses you no doubt toted about…”

“I mean, okay, yeah,” she conceded, and pulled another sour face. “And then, you know, there was ‘dating a really old guy’ theory, and shut up.” 

He wisely kept his teeth closed over that one, though he knew his eyes were dancing as he held back a couple of choice barbs over which sod she’d picked to date, and how wrong a selection it had been. After all, it was mostly in the nature of a game anymore, anyway. He’d long since made his peace with Angel, as had she. Good thing too, considering. 

Once she’d ascertained he was going to keep his mouth shut on that last, she shrugged it off with a heavy groan. “In the yearbook I think they picked me as ‘student most likely to kill someone’ or something…”

He chuckled again at that, and sorted swiftly through the ten or so comebacks that sprang to mind. Not that his sealed teeth helped him in the end. She was as dab a hand at reading him anymore as he was her. “Seriously, shut up,” she repeated, with an odd intensity, “and will you be the really old guy I bring to this idiotic, like, adult version of a stupid prom I don’t need, to face down a bunch of people I shouldn’t care about who only survived long enough to throw this stupid party because no way they would help with the battle or they’d break a nail, so they don’t think I’m still a huge loser?” It all came out in a rush, and, oh hell.

/Christ, Buffy./ It was his turn to sigh heavily at her ‘don’t want to look vulnerable but I actually am’ expression. /You know I can read you like a book by now, don’t you, you madwoman?/ There was a time when he’d as soon have simply drained the prats as been her date for an evening of trying to show them up, but he at least vaguely understood, now, her reasons for wanting to show them how she’d transcended them all. 

Hell. Once he would have badly wanted the same, when it came to his own tormentors. Granted, being a young vampire, he had in the end gone for theatrical slaughter in lieu of showing up in front of them with Dru. Though, one wondered what that would have proved, beyond that he’d become far more confident and self-assured than he had been, and that they could no longer hurt him. /No doubt I’d still have ended in draining them all, with Dru at my side. All things being equal…/

He most definitely understood Buffy’s motivation, though. /One needn’t care about the people, or even, at base, their opinions, to care about their cruelty./ “I got a soddin’ soul for you, you nit,” he reminded her, and kissed her temple to soften the verbiage. “What’s a night letting you parade me around in front of a load of self-impressed townies?”

Her uncertain-behind-a-cover-of-fierceness expression faded out to slow pleasure in him. “Well,” she answered with a shy smile, and looked away. “There is that, I guess. And you even chose to keep it.”

“I did, that. Least I could do for a woman who told me I didn’t need it for her to love me.” Stunned amazement still filled him each time he recalled that clear-eyed admission.

Her eyes on his were depthless with the adoration he’d somehow, inexplicably earned since his first tentative, barmy days back from Africa. “You don’t, you know. And I really do.” She curled back into his chest. “I would even if you didn’t come to this stupid reunion with me. But the fact that you will…” Her fist folded once more into the wrinkled, stretched-out cotton of his collar. “You have no idea what it means to me, Spike.”

“Think I can figure it,” he answered, and lifted his arms to wrap them around her, as her gratitude and love flowed through him; a lavage to his demon’s heart and a balm to his human soul.

*** 

They had a wall up  _ in memoriam _ to all the students who’d died in their class. Which was just terrifying, really, to see it all up there in cold blood like that, starkly pinned to a gym wall, and she could really use her friends here with her to shore her up, facing this craziness. 

Wil and Xan had totally begged off the whole reunion thing, though, like smart people. They were all, _“We have so much to do, though…”_ and, _“I need to train all the new witches, now I can again,”_ and, _“Man, but Cass wanted to take that trip to Europe, and have me show her Paris,”_ and, _“It’s just, we already bought tickets,”_ and, _“Okay, Buffy, but none of those people liked us anyway!”_ and,  why oh why had she come here, again? 

Jeez; there were so  _ many _ . So many more dead than had made it through alive, and it  _ hurt _ . It hurt to see how many she had failed to save… Like poor insecure Jonathan Levinson, sitting there with his sweet, uncertain smile, his hands folded on his knee and his sweater just so; victim to his own desperate need to fit in somewhere. Anywhere. He had driven her insane, but…

Cordy was there, of course, which thank god wasn’t Buffy’s fault. Still hurt to see her there, though. And Harmony, who technically counted, though it didn’t really feel like the ex-Cordette was really dead, in a way, and was that bad? 

Larry was up near the top, of course, since the thing was alphabetical. Xander still lamented that the poor guy had never gotten to truly enjoy his new gayness. Gay-ity? Was that a term? And, then there were those asshats from the swim team, who’d eaten their coach (which, honestly, good riddance, in Buffy’s mind), and then… What had ended up happening to those guys, anyway? Did they swim out to sea or something? They’d been on milk cartons for years after that whole thing. 

And there was Morgan Shay, with his dummy-possessing demon-hunter. And Jesse McNally, who had been Xander’s best friend once upon a time, only to die upon his stake in a terrible, accidental situation that had scarred her friend against vampires forever. And Marvin whatever his name had been, who was in that idiotic vampire club with Anne Steele (how crazy was it to think of that name as the other girl’s, now, and not her own alias?). And Kevin, that guy who’d been dumb enough to date Cordelia, and got himself turned into vamp snack food along with his entire posse of friends, right before Buffy had gone down to get  _ herself _ dead the first time around. 

There was Amy Madison, of course, her photo right next to the doors of their borrowed gym which looked so much like the one in Sunnydale where they’d fought her mother, using her body, in the witch-fight that had set her daughter so far off course. Ventura High, who had agreed to host the Sunnydale reunion, had very similar colors to the former Razorbacks, which added to the illusion. 

Amy, had of course, eventually gotten herself killed in the process of making herself an enemy of Slayerdom, because why not? Apparently, so had that other kid who’d been into witchy stuff with her, Michael Czajak, who had died of ‘natural causes’… which Buffy was pretty sure was code for a magicks overdose. Probably at Rack’s place, when you considered the date given, poor stupid kid. 

The names and the faces rolled on and on; an endless list of failures. Each one punched her in gut and heart, like an unspoken accusation. 

She hadn’t remotely expected this bunch of airheaded socialites to do something so thoughtful. It was agonizing. It made her wonder, try to count… /How many of us actually survived high school? How many people are even  _ here _ today? How many of Sunnydale’s Class of ’99 are alive to be reunited… much less the other classes? I mean,  _ God _ ./

There was even a separate little wall to memorialize Principal Flutie, and Ms. Calendar, and Dr. Gregory, and the other half-dozen or so ‘beloved’ teachers and staff who’d died because they’d been stupid enough (or brilliant enough, if the Mayor was behind it) to build a school full of hormonal teens over a hellmouth—twice—and, just…

Spike was behind her, hand at the small of her back; a supportive, silent statue as she took in the faces, tried to remember all the names, their attendant fates. “I guess I just never realized there were… so many,” she heard herself whisper. “And, like… this was just  _ our _ class. What about the older ones, and the younger ones…” She shook her head. “I mean, like, Cameron was an ass who sexually harassed me, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to turn into a fish and die or become a murderer or whatever, because Coach Marin decided to do hellmouthy experiments on them. And, like…” She frowned at the wall. “Though, maybe they didn’t die, I guess. But still. And, I mean, I guess technically Marcie Ross didn’t die either, but who knows where she ended up. Anyway, those varsity guys were older than us, and the list just goes on, and…”

“You can’t save everybody, Buffy. You barely sodding slept as it was.” Spike’s hand tightened against her lower back, his voice a disapproving rumble. “Fucksake, Love, why put yourself through this? You had to graduate; and how you managed that is beyond me. You saved the world however bloody many times, survived some-bloody-how, and even managed to pull a decent enough grade-point-average that you got into bleeding  _ Northwestern _ . Never know how you did it, save you’re bloody brilliant…”

“Stahp.”

“Never in life. Anyroad,” he went on inexorably, “I think you owe yourself the benefit of the bleedin’ doubt.”

She allowed herself to careen against his shoulder, blew out a cleansing breath, nodded, and leaned her head against him. He was right, and she would try to let it go. “Can we go somewhere else? I carry all these people with me all the time anyway. I can’t look at this anymore.”

“Never thought we should look too close at it in the first bloody place. C’mon.” Arm around her shoulder, he turned her smartly at right angles to the horrible wall, and led her over toward the refreshments area. “What do you think, luv? Since we’re back in the States anyway, should we just hang about for another couple of weeks? Save the old geezer the dosh it’d cost to cover our travel expenses, and head up the coast in time to attend the Bit’s graduation from Berkeley?”

“Oh, God; that’s coming up, isn’t it?” She shook her head in amazement. “Oh, wow; she’s gonna freak if we don’t head right up there from here, isn’t she?” Exhaustion abruptly swamped her at the thought. /Man./ Sometimes dealing with the kids was more strenuous than fighting a whole pod of Chimera-demons. 

Spike turned his face directly into her neck, began an ongoing conversation with her flesh there, because he knew precisely how to distract her from uncomfortable thoughts of any hue, be they dead ex-classmates, or her unfortunate inability to deal well with small children. “Yeah… but if we did, we’d end up on childcare duty while she fussed about finals and her thesis…”

/Alright for you, since you’re like a freaking Pied Piper to those babies…/ Spike was scarily good with kids. You’d think, considering during his reign of terror with his sire he’d probably spent a significant number of years  _ eating _ babies, he’d have a tough time, or at least spend a lot of it having bad flashbacks or something, but no. He was frighteningly chill, and even seemed to have fun with them. He didn’t even mind the stank of diapers, which blew her mind, because with his enhanced vampire nostrils… 

He was just good at small people, was all. The asshole. Did he always have to show her up?

“…And we’d never bloody well see her,” he went on, apparently unaware of Buffy’s internal crisis. “At best we’d get a wave or a kiss on the cheek til her graduation day.” Despite the uncomfortable subject matter, his low, rumbling murmurs were making Buffy think of things that had exactly zero to do with the content of his words. “All we’d be doing is relieving the kid of his voluntary duty…”

Buffy sighed heavily. “You have a good point. Last time we made ourselves too available, we got stuck there for three months and lost our apartment.”

His lips tickled at her nape. “Precisely.”

_ Man _ , he sounded English when he said stuff like that. And, for the record, he shouldn’t be allowed to nibble on her neck in a public venue. Or rather, he  _ should _ , but she should be allowed to drag him off into some corner shortly thereafter.

As if reading her mind—which wasn’t altogether an unlikely prospect—he grinned against her neck. “Think of it this way, Love. We drag this out long enough, we won’t have to fold ourselves into another plane till July…” 

“Yeah,” she heard herself whisper, and gave up to turn and press herself mindlessly against his erection. “Yeah, there is that.”

“And then the next reunion you’ll be asked to attend is your Berkeley one. Just think; another graduation from the same school, but this time only a year ahead of your sis…”

His words were like a dash of cold water, bringing her head up to narrow her eyes at him in mock-fury. /Dumbass./ Leaning away so that her hips remained square with his long, cool frame, she fixed him with a pointed glare. “Not until 2018…”

He reeled her upper body back in against him and set to work once more. “My sexy… Hot… Degree-holding Slayer…”

“Suck-up.” Dammit, she was going to have to drag him off into some… supply closet or something soon if he kept doing that, and he knew it. “You’re not as smooth as you think you are, Mister.”

“Maybe not,” he murmured, descending from her ear-ish area. This time he went for the money and set to tickling at his bite scar, the jerk. “But I think I can get a smile out of you yet…” And, just when she was pretty convinced some serious dragging was in order… he stopped, turned his head away from her so that her forehead landed on his cheekbone, and told her in a bright, cheery voice, “I wonder what they’ve got on the drinks table?”

“Buh?”

He already had hold of her elbow and was steering her in that direction—which had the very unfortunate effect of pulling her body away from  _ his _ body—and he would have to forgive her for being totally thrown off her game by his abrupt change in direction. “Here, pet. Let’s see if any of this is spiked.”

With some fairly serious effort, she managed to rustle up a grin in payment for his hard work. “You know it just sounds self-aggrandizing when you say that.”

He smirked. “I’ve my flask. If they’ve fallen down on the job, I’ll see to it we’re properly libated.”

“I knew I could count on you, honey.”

He tugged her up against his side with his arm, a surge of pleasure jolting through him to her, as always happened when she sporadically favored him with her very occasional endearments. “Call me sweet nothings like that and I’ll give you the world.”

“I know you will.” Smiling, she let herself be guided to the drinks bar.

They settled on some indeterminate form of punch, sipping it with, in her case, slow-growing pleasure when she realized it wasn’t some cheap Kool-Aid derivative, but actually had real fruit juice in it, and Spike with suspicion and a faint frown of disappointment as he tasted not one jot of the hard stuff mixed in. “Well, that’s rubbish.”

“You’ll fix it. In the meantime, at least it’s better than a Costco special…” 

Her wrist was seized, her cheap, red plastic cup raised, and his flask was tapped to the side of it. “Cheers, luv.”

“Well,” she breathed, and turned the big headlights on him, “now it’s a party.”

He halted briefly, sucked in a hard breath. “Fuck, Buffy, don’t look at me like that when we’re meant to stay in a public venue for another couple of hours. It’s bloody indecent.”

She essayed a slow, coy smile filled with promise. “You’re the one trying to get me plastered.” Give credit where it was due, her guy was doing a stellar job of making her completely forget about that wall of shame over there staring her in the back of the head. 

Spike exhaled hard through his nose and then grinned. “Fair enough. But I’ll have you know I’m countin’ on you following through with that look when we get back to the hotel.”

She answered his grin with a matching one. “Well, you know, considering what I’m putting you through tonight, I think you’ve earned at least twenty minutes of fellatio, if not…”

“Oh my God;  _ Buffy?” _

Buffy jumped about ten feet before she swung around to face their attacker—or, not attacker, but whatever. She was used to actually sensing the encroachers who interrupted her flirtation with her mate. “Uh… hey, Katherine. I… Wow. Long time no see.” /Great recovery, there, Buffy! Jeez./

The other girl, an ex-cheerleader who had once dyed her hair as blonde as Buffy herself (or as Spike’s, for that matter), was almost unrecognizable with her light-brown tresses cut into a layered, shoulder-length style, and curled at each layer into a cute, face-framing do. She still had that too-big smile and the ditzy look about her—she’d always looked almost like Harmony’s twin or something, back in the day—but the rest of her had changed so much it was freaksome. 

She was hanging off the arm of a not-so-altered Eric Singleton, who remained smiling and silent in the clear expectation that the woman he was escorting would do all the talking in the current engagement. Which to be fair had been about par for the course back in the day, and apparently remained the same for the poor idiot now. Eric had been a fullback (halfback? Something-back) on the varsity football team, but he’d never been a big talker. He’d always just ended up someone’s arm-candy, more than anything. The Cordettes had kind of passed him around from girl to girl like a charm being clicked from one bracelet to another. Buffy couldn’t recall him even once speaking a word out of turn. 

Had he ever found himself, after school? Buffy hoped for his sake that he was just acting the same out of old habit, because he was working with Katherine to do the reunion thing. It was easy to imagine that her constant yapping could revert a quiet guy like him back to strong-and-silent mode.

Katherine had turned her gaze on Spike, all high-beams and bright interest, with that clear expectation about her that Buffy should introduce her guy, which, /Sigh./ “Uh, Katherine Wexford, Eric Singleton, this is William Pratt. Spike, Eric Singleton, former football star, though no idea what you’re doing now, Eric…”

Nothing. Just a nod and a smile.

“…And Katherine Wexford, former runner-up to the homecoming queen… Who was Cordelia, of course.”

Katherine never bothered to fill in what Eric had been up to. She didn’t even fill in what she herself had been up to, in favor of leaping right onto the choicest piece of gossip available. “Oh, God, yeah,  _ Cordy! _ Can you  _ believe _ what happened to her? Hit by a city bus, in a coma, then,  _ pfft; _ oh wow…” She shook her head, then turned with the standard, bubbly welcome-wagon shine to take Spike’s hand and pump it enthusiastically. “Sorry, where are my manners? So good to meet you…” She gasped a little at the feel of his hand. “Was it William, or…”

Having long since made the flask vanish back inside his duster, her vampire shrugged and permitted her to handle his appendage. “Spike works. Don’t go by the other much anymore...” He gave the former cheerleader one swift pump of the hand and then firmly detached himself to hold a hand out to Eric, who took it, smiled faintly, and still didn’t say a damn word.

“I’m sorry about the chill,” Katherine babbled, apparently arrested by the feeling of Spike’s room-temperature flesh. “I guess it is kind of cold in here; I’ll get the guys to look into that. You’ll check it out, right Eric?”

Eric mumbled something appropriately subservient-sounding.

“We didn’t want anyone to be too hot once the dancing got started…”

“No worries. I run cold…” 

“Well, anyway,” she beamed at Spike, flashing right back to the interrupted introductions. “Spike. Such a manly name! So, as I was saying. Cordy!”

“Yeah,” Spike interrupted, gamely playing along. He sounded constipated. Man, Buffy owed him big for this. “That chit Cordelia was one tough bird. Was a real shame, what happened to her.”

There was real feeling behind that last, which once again made Buffy wonder what Spike had gotten out of the interaction her guy had had with her ex-classmate in LA. After all, he had to barely remember her from their run-ins in Sunnydale once upon a time. She would have registered as just another screaming student to him, then.

“Oh, you knew her?” Katherine blinked, looking amazed. “I don’t remember you from school or anything…” she led.

“No,” Buffy broke in, smiling faintly. “He just hung around the edges. He didn’t go to Sunnydale.” /I mean, obviously, since he’s clearly from  _ England _ , you dipshit./

“Was visiting a relative from across the Pond,” Spike lied smoothly, “saw Buffy here, and just couldn’t quite tear myself away. That’s the long and the short of it.”

Buffy hugged his arm to her chest, aware to this very day how stupidly lucky she was that he hadn’t been able to make himself leave, even if it might have been way better for him to do so; at least back then. “The  _ very _ short of it.” /Because you’re amazing. And insane. And I love you./

To her shock, Eric actually got a word in edgewise at this. “He’s not the guy you took to prom, though. I mean, he was also older; that one super tall, dark-haired guy. But…” A quick, uncertain glance around them. “I think he was, like, a friend of her dad’s or something…”

/Oh, wow…/ Also, didn’t these people ever hear of, like, not staying with someone you dated in high school? Like, she had believed that her high school love was forever, back in the day, but that had been because to not-believe it would have been to admit that none of the crap they had all sacrificed because of her loving Angel was necessarily worth it, which was not to be thought, back then. She had since grown up, come to recognize that first love wasn’t necessarily the only kind of love there could ever be. It was intense, and exciting, and melodramatic… and meant to burn itself out into a rosy memory. It wasn’t real, wasn’t the kind of love that lasted. It didn’t make a lifetime’s worth of memories, and it didn’t hold up under the pressures of everyday living. 

She’d since learned what kind of loving did, and she felt bad for these people if they didn’t know that, hadn’t realized it, still believed that that kind of fairytale high school love story was the best kind of love anyone could ever achieve, because infantile, much?

Katherine had joined her escort in looking all confused. “Yeah, I remember him.” She turned back to Buffy, frowning. “And I totally thought you were involved with that other girl, for a while there. Which, I mean, more power to you if you wanna swing that way…” Clearly, Katherine Wexford, like Eric Singleton, had never heard of tact. “The dark-haired one; the one who didn’t go to our school. ‘Cause I totally thought you had a type, for a while there. You dated Scott Hope, too, before he went all gay, and he was dark-haired. Who knew you’d end up with a blond, right?” She managed to make it sound like she didn’t quite buy into the reality of Buffy’s relationship with Spike, if only on the strength of him being light-haired, or whatever. Before Buffy could remotely interrupt, say anything cutting, the bitch babbled on, swinging like a barn door back to the subject of Faith. “Who was that chick, anyway? Did she go to Monteverde, or…”

Spike, whose expressions had run the gamut from amused over the mention of Angel, to smug over being the one to have broken her long-running streak of typecasting, now turned into that shit-eating one he reserved for mention of her ongoing fencing matches with a still-interested Faith. At this last, he elbowed her lightly. “Yeah, what was that about, with Faith, pet?”

“You keep that up,” she informed him too-sweetly, “and you don’t get prezzies tonight.”

He wisely shut his mouth, though his grin never quite faded entirely. 

“Faith and I were just friends,” Buffy informed Katherine, turning back. “She wanted more, but I missed it, back in the day. We’re still close friends nowadays, but she’s moved on.” /More or less. And that’s the end of  _ that _ conversation./ “So, how’s life been for you?” /Not that I wanna know, but apparently I have to ask, because I was stupid enough to come to this dumb thing, and you clearly think gossip’s still the most important thing in the universe, even when we’re standing right in front of a wall full of our dead classmates, you freak…/

They chatted in desultory fashion with Katherine (though not anymore with the silent Eric) for a few minutes, till they could manage to shake the duo by reminding them that they probably had other people to meet-n-greet (hopefully some of whom, Buffy intimated, might be more interesting than the former outcast crazy-girl of Sunnydale). Finally the irritating pair bounced, and she and Spike could resume their conversation regarding the disappointingly non-alcoholic standards of the punch on offer at the current establishment. “So, anyway, Love…” He slipped the flask back out of his duster, god bless him, and tapped it lightly on the edge of her untouched drink. “As I was saying. By way of suitable inducement, once we get back to the hotel… You know, if you can stomach my being not at all your type, and male.”

He was such a dope. “A, we all know what color you are under the dye…”

He snickered and shot her a glance filled with fond tongue-rolling. 

Buffy batted her lashes at him. “Don’t let Katherine fool you. Whatever happened between me and Faith in high school, I’m still very interested in playing with your boy-parts; and with no need for alcoholic inducement.” She nudged the flask just enough so that a thin stream of liquor tipped into her punch. “Not that I’m saying no.” She’d definitely become a better drinker since spending a sloppy night on a sarcophagus getting wasted with him eight years ago.

He guffawed at her. “For which I’m exceedingly grateful, on a daily basis. Here, Love. Call it a bonus for dealing with idiots like that one all night.” And he tipped the flask over her cup, offering her a more substantial tot of what was probably Kentucky bourbon, by the alcoholic miasma wafting up to sizzle pleasantly inside her nostrils. “There, then. That should take the sting away, next time one of ‘em accosts you to ask you did you...”

“Oh. My.  _ God _ , it’s Buffy Summers! I would never have thought you’d come to this! Wow! I mean, okay, hey!” Shanice Deitrick broke into their conversation, her arm on some tall, dark, and handsome, expensively-suited guy’s elbow, her tawny makeup just so, her hair gleaming and perfect, not one stitch out of place. “And, my goodness, look at the catch she brought to the party! Richard, look! I want you to meet Buffy Summers… Is it still Summers? Buffy, this is Richard Washington, my fiancé; and this is…”

Buffy just barely managed to hold back the sigh for all the fake niceties of it all as she re-introduced Spike, who, she thought, was finding all of this very amusing, based on the way he was standing and not-smirking right now. 

“Wow, he’s  _ hot _ .” Shanice patted her fiancé on the chest reassuringly. “No offense, honey, but, wow.” She turned back to Buffy, shaking her head in astonishment. “How’d you hook such a hottie, when you were such a repressed prude? No offense, but let’s be real.” As if having missed that she possessed even less tact than her buddy Katherine, Shanice rattled on without giving Buffy even a second to respond, or even really do more than gape. “I mean, was he part of your weird cult, or… He couldn’t be, right? No one this sexy would join one of those groups where no one does the nasty! I mean, you obviously never did, but…”

“Shanice, hon, you know I love how straightforward you are, but that’s probably none of your business…”

Buffy was still busy being incredulous that, A, these women hadn’t grown out of the Mean Girls thing, and B, that someone would say all that out loud, to her face, whatever they had believed all those years ago. Before she could remotely think of anything to say in response to this remarkable charge, however, Spike was wading in, all dry sarcasm. Because if there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was anyone maligning his mate, and god knew that if the gloves came off in a snark-match, he would win it. 

He could maybe even beat  _ her _ , and that was saying something. “Oh, you’d be surprised, Shanice,” he informed the woman cuttingly, his tones a flat and lazy drawl. “Buffy could give any woman here a run for her money, the things she does in bed. Most of them defy gravity, and last at least twenty-four hours. And the only cult she was ever a part of was a martial arts club, in which she could kick anyone’s ass, including yours truly.” He waggled his brows pointedly. “Lucky thing it’s a kink of mine, getting my arse handed to me by a petite blonde; in more ways than one.” And, smirking at their interlocutors, he took Buffy’s arm and nodded. “Good evening, all.” And he pulled her away, toward the dance floor. 

Buffy would remember the look on Shanice’s face for years. It was priceless. “Well, talk about laying it all right out there,” she murmured, nudging him lightly in the side with her elbow.

“Fucking bitch,” he answered, his tones all gritty and pissed off. 

“You only get to bite her if she offers,” she reminded him. 

“Bloody stupid rule.” 

“I love it when you’re all grumbly and shirty.”

He glanced over at her, good humor somewhat restored. “You have no idea what that word means, Slayer. To this day I’ve yet to hear you use it right.”

“Well, that’s your fault for never teaching me how, isn’t it.”

“Point,” he allowed easily, and bent to nuzzle at her ear. “So. How long do we have to stay at this rubbish thing, anyway,” he breathed, “before I take you back to the hotel and we make use of that big California king bed there? I reckon with acreage like that, we could get into all sorts of trouble; stuff that would turn that nosy bird’s hair white.” His free hand had drifted, almost of its own accord, to trace chilly, fiery lines up over the low-cut shoulder of her peasant blouse. Well aware what it did to her, his fingertips were making tracks for her neck and the faint bite-scars there, lying unnoticed by the uninitiated beneath the curtain of her hair. “Like that thing we did that one time when we were in that hotel in Chicago, after we took out that nest of Garaltan…”

She let the familiar, tiny shiver work its way up her spine, enjoying the sensations his fingers always produced as tickled his way down along her throat, tracing her carotid, to where his mark resided. Second only to when he nibbled along it, teasing her, going just so close but not quite there... Which was a very nice ‘public game’ indeed. “Why, um…” She cleared her throat, continued with an effort. “…Did we come to this stupid thing again?” Speech could, in fact, be managed, if a little breathily. “I mean, I used to stop apocalypses in May. Now I’m at a high school reunion…” She trailed off with a sharp intake of breath when he turned to her out of nowhere, his breath now taking the place of his fingers, and stopped her in her tracks to do that one thing with the tip of his tongue that he knew made her lose the ability to form actual meaningful words.

He halted his publicly dangerous activity for about half a second to smirk against the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Which could be considered fairly dire from your point of view, Slayer,” he mocked, a grin audible in his low, unfairly rumbly voice.

“Don’t tease me,” she grumbled back, fighting not to close her eyes, and maybe, just maybe, to hold onto her pique for a second or two longer. Her hands itched to grab hold of him, drag him closer, maybe grind against him mindlessly, because he was a jerk, playing his games with her like this in a public venue. 

It would probably be safer if they were doing this on the dance floor, where such gyrations as he was tempting could be considered part of sanctioned activities. At least, nominally, anyway. “Is it bad that I kind of wish a monster would attack this thing, just to give me something to do here?” /Because, A, libido, and B, maybe it would eat Katherine and Shanice?/

Cool, all-too-knowledgeable hands trailed down her sides, frustratingly lightly, then slipped away so that one could touch the center of his own chest. Leaning back, he affected a thoughtful air. “I could come up behind you and pretend to take you hostage, Love, if you’d like. Drag you out of here, tell everyone I intend to make you my breakfast…”

An approving shiver worked its way up Buffy’s spine, because obviously she hadn’t heard of tact either. Or, her brain had thrown it right out of the window ever since her first run-in with an ex-Cordette, because right now a grand exit like that just sounded hilarious. Not to mention hot.

“Maybe reenact my first, magnificent entry into Sunnydale High public life?” Spike continued, her obvious arousal encouraging him. He grinned broadly, daring her… and then swiftly changed tacks, shrugging. “Of course, that’d utterly destroy the image you have going here of us as the cute little couple, but it’d probably be the hell of a lot more fun…”

Buffy did close her eyes at this, hating to admit she was sorely tempted. She didn’t mind admitting she definitely enjoyed it when they switched roles. On occasion. Especially if it was for a good purpose. And this would so be for good reason. “You know if you did that I would just get horny…” He scoffed at her, if only to let her know that wasn’t exactly that big of a leap at the moment. She ignored him loftily. “…And it would really just lead to role-play, like the last time. Which, while fun, isn’t exactly the kind of thing I wanna follow through with in this particular venue…”

When she finally opened her eyes he was giving her the brow treatment. “Suddenly we’re a blushing maiden who has problems with indecent exposure, is it?”

She considered wapping him on the chest. “This isn’t a cemetery,” she pointed out, logically, she thought. 

He rolled his eyes upward, returned his gaze to her, grinned challengingly. “Sounds a right nice diversion, to my mind. And what’s wrong with gettin’ a bit randy, between friends?”

She sighed, giving in, and grabbed his collar. “Nothing at all. But we still have some dancing to do, first.” She was determined to show him off out there for the duration of at least one song before they bailed to go wreck the hotel room bed. 

He obliged equably enough, since he liked dancing with her as well as she did with him. Unfortunately, they made it only halfway to the idiotically black-lit space with its sporadic population of bad dancers before they were, of course, accosted yet again by another ex-Cordette, because apparently this was their new habitat or something. 

Once upon a time she had actually vaguely liked this girl. Ish. What had she been thinking?

“Buffy! Hi! Oh my God, it’s so amazing to see you here! I somehow didn’t think…” Teresa Blaine’s voice trailed off when Buffy, who’d had her eyes closed, as tended to happen involuntarily when Spike was doing  _ that _ to her neck, jumped in shock at the abrupt intrusion. 

She stared at the incoming, sleek-haired creature who bore no resemblance now to the big-haired brunette she’d been back in high school. “And who’s the hottie you’ve scored since? Wowsa! I mean, not to try to take him off your hands, but, you know, if you’re ever bored with him and deciding to move on to another model…”

/Wow, okay, why did I think you were okay?/ Maybe she’d felt sorry for Teresa, thought she’d only hung with Cordy’s set because she’d been allowed to and had no other friends. But the way the girl was talking now made her wonder if she’d been worth Buffy’s sympathy.

Spike appeared to agree. His hands slid down to Buffy’s hips as if to steady her, and his head tilted so that his cheek rested against the back of her head. “Never in life,” he informed the ex-cheerleader blandly, and smirked in his trademark way, arrogant and smug. “She can’t be rid of me. I won’t let her escape. Will I, pet?”

Buffy leaned hard into the ease he offered with his low-voiced, rumbling support, fixed a vicious smile onto her face, and slid her fingers into Spike’s where they’d splayed over the edges of her hips and dangerously into less-than-public territory. “Yeah, I haven’t managed to get rid of him yet. I’ve decided to keep him around, right babe?” And okay, so she was babbling, and she was more than one-hundred-percent sure she had absolutely never, not once, called Spike ‘babe’ before, but seeing so many Cordettes all over again was really throwing her. 

Luckily, her vampire didn’t call her on it, though he did make a faint sound of way-too-smug amusement. “Long as I go on earning my keep, I’ll warrant.” And he nuzzled some more at her neck, which… Alright. He  _ knew _ she was incapable of keeping her eyes open when he did that, didn’t he? “So long as we’re here, you wanna get your dance on, lover?”

/Oh, fuck./ He knew what it did to her when he called her that.  _ “Mmmm.” _

These meetings were getting shorter and shorter as Spike ran out of patience for the social niceties. (Well, to be fair, Buffy was kind of over the whole thing as well. She couldn’t put it all on Spike.)

They hadn’t even gotten through any introductions, this time.

“Oh my gosh! He’s British, too? What a steal! I mean, I’m happy with Neil, but if your guy has a brother, Buffy…” Teresa’s voice was snappy and breathless with envy, edged with irritation that the former class weirdo had scored higher on the guy-nabbing index than she had.

“No brothers,” Spike murmured, clearly totally Over It, and turned her without another word to drag her toward the dance floor. “Evening,” he dismissed in Teresa’s general direction. “C’mon, pet.” He was still pivoting her toward the floor, blind as a worm on a hook, before she could quite realize that the interview was over. “I wanna get you all wet and ready for me before we leave this soddin’ place,” he informed her, uncaring whether the former socialite could still hear them. “Show you off, let you show me off, and then…”

No longer even remotely thrown by such language, as she had once been in younger and far more inhibited years, Buffy internally cheered such plans as she followed, moving with him instinctively as was their wont. Somewhere in the background she thought she heard the faint strains of a Bush song playing, which was fairly apropos. She’d listened to way too much Bush back in the day, what with the whole Gavin Rossdale fixation and everything. Not to mention that about ninety percent of their songs had been pretty oddly perfect for things like having an affair with a vampire and being mad at yourself about really wanting it, and twisted stuff like that.

Spike dragged her up against him the second they were out on the floor; the glittering light of the ubiquitous and cliché disco ball flashing against her closed eyelids. The strains of a familiar hit beat against her ears as he pressed her against his long, wiry body _. “I don’t wanna come back down from this cloud…”  _ She fit against the hard-muscled form of him the way she always had, and felt herself melt into place, like she was being poured into a mold to set.  _ “It’s taken me all this time to find out what I need.”  _ No one—no one ever—had had the effect on her that Spike had. She had fought to deny it for way too long, but it was what it was. Call it chemistry, call it blood, call it instinct, call it what you would; they met in a place without thought, and in that place they fit like two puzzle-pieces. Always had. “God,” she groaned, and slipped her arms around his neck to drag him down against her. He bowed his body around her, yanked her in close, and then it was all movement and breath and forgetting everything but the way he felt and the way she felt, feeling him, and dammit, why had they never danced together before Sunnydale had fallen into ruin? 

She wondered it every time they did this, and every time she came up empty for an answer. /I was just a stupid, self-sabotaging ass, is what. Jeez…/ Dancing with Spike was like sex with Spike. Everything fit, everything was a perfect, insane, ever-in-motion tango clouded with lust and love and him looking at her with awe and admiration and holding her like she was the key to the kingdom of heaven and the damned all at once, and she only hoped she gave him the same kind of…

He groaned against her as the music changed to something faster that she only vaguely remembered, and, inspired, she turned in his arms to grind her ass against his ever-present erection. 

“Fuck, pet, how long are we staying here, is it?”

“Whatever.” She caught his hands, trained them back on her hips, folded her fingers in his briefly to give him his marching orders, then flung her arms back, around his neck from behind to keep him just there, breathing hard and newly-desperate against the scar of his bite. “We’ve been. We’ve seen. We’ve conquered.”

_ “Veni, vici… vaminos _ , Love. I need to get you somewhere flat and drive you barmy with my tongue…”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

“You do now.” 

She turned again, aware her eyes would look impossibly bright to his in the low light. And wove her fingers between his once more, so he could feel her heart pumping in the palms of her hands. “Tell me how you’re gonna  _ take _ me back to the hotel and make me forget about all of this.”

Grinning, he bent and whispered a few sweet and filthy nothings into her ear, trembling the flesh behind the curve of it, her neck, her throat. Which she cleared, after a sec. “Well. You talk a good game. As always.” The short, peppy song pouring out of the DJ’s stall behind them was trailing to its abrupt end, and another was beginning; one she didn’t honestly care about, and never had. She pivoted to resume curling into him little-spoon fashion, aware she was driving him slowly nuts. He deserved it, anyway, since he’d been doing the same to her all night, playing with his bite, teasing her. “I think I might have to take you up on that.”

His voice sounded something between playful and taut. “Never thought I’d land a cheerleader…”

She half-swiveled to slug him lightly in the chest. “Shut up, or I’ll take it back.”

He grinned some more, rubbing at the spot she’d wapped. “Alright, pretend I never said it.” His eyes danced pure mischief and evil at her as he drew her hands up; sparkled as he began walking backward with her, toward the big double doors, tugging her fully around to face him as he did so. “Though, if you ever think of putting on one of those short miniskirts sometime, and showing me one of those moves you chits did back then, with all the leg in ‘em…”

She freed her hands to give him a stiff-fingered shove through the door. “You’re gonna be lucky to get laid tonight, buster, if you keep teasing me…”

“You leaving already, Buffy? You just barely got here…”

Buffy opened her mouth to reply, though her mind was totally elsewhere, but she didn’t get far. Spike, the dick, had already jumped in to fence with their latest unwanted conversational partner. “She made her appearance, showed me off. Now I’m needed to perform at my sexual peak to keep her satisfied. Which means we’d best leave, since I’m assuming you won’t want us shaggin’ on your nice, rented gym floor…”

Katherine’s eyes bugged out a little. “I… You…. Wh…”

Smirking, Spike turned back to Buffy, who was determined not to blush no matter what he said tonight. Not in front of Katherine Wexford, anyway. “You did say no free shows, right Love?”

Buffy smirked in her turn, and reached up to nip his lip. “You’re a dope. And I love you. And no; no free shows. But you can feel free to bang me in the car on the way back to the hotel.”

“Excellent.”

“As long as you think we can afford the security deposit, that is…”

He tilted his head, all instigate-y and sparkling with ideas. “We’ll charge it to the Organization.”

Holy shit, he was hot. “God, imagine explaining that to Giles…”

“Oh, doubt he’ll need an explanation, pet.” He nipped her earlobe to keep her moving, gave her another tug that said Katherine was no reason to halt their progress. “Probably best not to tell your da anything as’ll confirm the worst in his mind…”

“Good point.”

Katherine, still gaping, faded from their two-person reality as Spike continued to guide her toward the exit. Behind them, out on the dance floor, the song had switched to “I’m Gonna Be” by the Proclaimers; the one everyone usually thought was called “500 Miles”. To her surprise, Spike sang along jauntily as he spun her toward the great outdoors.  _ “And when I come home! Yes, you know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who comes back home with you! I’m gonna be the maaaan… who’s comin’ hoooome… with you!” _

“I’m shocked!” Buffy informed him as they passed out of the gym. “Shocked, I tell you, that you know the words to such a kitschy pop ballad.”

“Well, they’re Scottish,” he explained as he nudged her toward the outside doors and their rental car. “Brit solidarity, and all that.” He made a reluctant face. “Besides, it’s bloody catchy. That one, and the other one from your ridiculous era; the one that just spends the entire time talking about “Danny Boy”, and getting pissed, and being knocked down and getting back up…”

“‘Tubthumper’?” Buffy asked, amazed as she moved to open her door. Even here, halfway across the lot, she could still hear strains of music wafting out from the gym. She was pretty glad to be out of the stuffy room, here in the free night with her guy. /We survived. Who knew./ “Okay, now I’m going to get you drunk sometime and play that for you, because I would literally pay money to hear you sing it.”

He shot her a glare under beetled brows and walked swiftly around the vehicle to catch the door for her. “Do you want to get shagged tonight or not, Slayer?” he demanded roughly, hand on her lower back to guide her in, because this had been a date, and he was almost incapable of keeping his breeding under wraps in those circumstances. 

She was long since past the point where she would’ve teased him about his gentlemanly behavior, and merely ducked into the passenger side without comment. “Oh, definitely. But that’s gonna happen no matter how much I tease you about music, so I think I’m safe.” She settled into her side of the car with her self-assured expression on, turned her face up, and glowed at him.

He stood there for a sec, all poleaxed, then sighed. “Bloody smug chit.”

“I know my guy.”

“Damn you.” Shaking his head, he pivoted on his heel and marched around the back of the car to stomp into the driver’s seat.

“You love me,” she reminded him in full confidence as she laid her skull back against the headrest and watched him turn the engine over.

He turned his head to eye her in the low light before guiding the depressingly sedate sedan out of the half-full parking lot. “Hell yes I do, Buffy. I just went to a high school reunion for you.”

She smiled into the night. “I know. And I will make sure you enjoy a sufficiency of sexual favors in return for your kind gesture; commencing in three, two…”

He gunned the motor. “I accept your bounty as full payment for my sacrifice. Though you can feel free to wait till we get back to the hotel before you…” He yipped in surprise when she flipped his belt open, with the ease of long practice, and shoved her hand unceremoniously under his waistband to grab his cock. “Or we could do that. Fuck, Slayer.”

“Pay attention to the road.” 

There was a protracted period of mostly-silence, punctuated briefly by a sharp intake of breath or two, then… “Christ, pet. And people call  _ me _ evil.”

/Okay, Mr. Innocent, getting me all worked up for however long in front of the whole world./ “Have to meet you halfway, since you work so hard these days to be such a  _ good _ boy…” The hint was plain. She’d had his button thumbed open long since. She figured it was time to make it a little tougher for him to concentrate, and scooched closer to apply her mouth to the evil in question. 

“Oh, bloody fuck, Love, do I get to pull over?”

“Nnn-nnn.”

_ “Fuck _ …”

After a mile or so of listening to his tortured appreciation, she was unsurprised when he lost his hold on the wheel briefly, regained it, and groaned. “Buffy, Christ. You didn’t say the twenty minutes of fellatio would be in the car…”

She pulled off briefly at that. “Are you complaining?” she asked, amazed.

“No! I’m just…” At a loss, his right hand fell to her crown, urging her back.

After another couple of minutes, though, he was ready to admit defeat. “Fuck, bloody hell, oh fuck; can I come, Buffy?”

She slid a finger down behind his balls, tickled at his taint a little as she pulled away once more and eyed his state appreciatively in the low light. He was so… glisteny and taut. “You do know that you’re not wearing your collar, right? You can do anything you need to.” She moved to return to her suspended task, hovered briefly over what she suspected would be a very brightly-colored, happy-to-see her cockhead. “Don’t crash, though.” And with that bit of advice, she gave him an admonishing little squeeze and resumed relations.

The car made an abrupt, jagged swerve over to the shoulder and went into park. And now both of his hands were on her head, and spasming roughly there. And his hips were making abortive little movements as he fought to keep himself in check and made strangled sounds somewhere above her. 

She kindly helped him keep the mess to a minimum, this being a rental. 

“Oh fuck, oh Love, oh  _ fuck!” _

A little while later she sat back to watch him in the dim glow of the streetlight somewhere a few hundred feet ahead of them. His head was hanging back against the headrest, and he was staring at the ceiling of the car, unseeing. “I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you,” she informed him quietly, and swiveled to reattach the seatbelt she’d clicked open somewhere in there in order to get better leverage.

“I love you, Buffy,” he answered into the night, and before she could do more than straighten, before she had entirely turned back to him, he was there, leaning over the console to capture her mouth in a slow, reverent kiss that left her ears ringing. 

“So,” she asked him, when he finally pulled away to afford her some oxygen, and pressed her forehead to his. “Hotel? I think maybe I’ll take you up on all that ‘party on the king bed’ stuff.”

“Your wish is my command, my love.” His eyes glowed on hers in the low light as he pulled away to resume their short drive.

She told him to keep the ring on when they got upstairs. It was so good to see him like that, in the mirrors. It wasn’t quite the same as if he were human, of course. He looked more like a Monet in a gallery; at least she thought Monet was the fuzzy-edged guy. She’d told him once that his mirror-and-ring look was what it would look like if Michelangelo or Da Vinci had decided to take some time off to paint nudes in watercolors, since those two guys were clearly gay as the day was long. Spike had laughed uproariously and gone on doing exactly what he had been doing, looking like a gorgeous, highly animated and very risqué Impressionist painting doing things none of those 19 th Century guys would have ever dared to draw, because they were all into cute urban and pastoral scenes—at least, based on what Buffy had seen in Mom’s gallery back in the day.

/Definitely a Michelangelo. Reflected in water, maybe./

Lying back, watching him as his mouth did things that left a lot more than an impression, she kept her eyes on the mirror over the hotel dresser, her fingers parked firmly in his hair, and enjoyed.

***

Once upon a time, Buffy would have hated being able to see him. She had always been grateful, when they had begun, that he was effectively invisible. She could pretend he was anyone else, looking in the mirror and seeing no one shagging her. A ghost. Or, of course, there had been the memorable time she had herself been ‘not-there’. 

Now, though, it was different. She slipped the magicked cover off the ring with purpose in her eyes the moment they’d stepped off the lift and entered their room, slid her arms round his neck, guided him in front of the mirror. “Be here, with me. Be here forever.”

That, he could do. Christ, he could most definitely do that. 

He thought he looked odd in the mirrors, the way the Gem reflected him. And certainly it was as much fun when he wasn’t there; entertaining to watch her quim expand and contract round nothing, and quiver in ecstasy near the end, pulsing in time to his thrusts as she moaned and arched up beneath him, crying out her release. A different thing altogether to see them both, and know he was here, and that she wanted him—more than—these days. To see himself as solid and real in her arms.

After he’d seen to her with his mouth, in thanks for that lovely bit of warmup in the rental car, she insisted on their facing the mirror together, and him taking her from behind, so they could both watch. The way the room was set up, they could scarcely see anything in the mirror below their waists, the thing having been set up atop the chest of drawers at the end of the bed. It had nothing on their own private set-up back home, where they’d purchased a lovely old Queen Anne mirror for just such occasions, but it would do. “Can’t angle this one to best effect, Love. Might miss a bit of the show.”

“Not the part I want to see.” Arching her back in a yoga move—there was ‘cat’ and ‘cow’, and this was the latter—she reared back a little against him. “I want to see you bite me. I wanna watch.”

He slowed, startled and more than a little amazed. “Really?”

Her response came without hesitation. “Definitely.”

/Well, hell./ Somehow they had never gotten round to that when shagging in front of any reflective surface. Though, granted, he supposed it made a sort of sense, if only from the standpoint of fair play. After all, she couldn’t easily nip him in return while he had the Gem on and functioning, or she might chip off all her bloody teeth; had to recall it in time, and keep the urge under wraps, or ask him to close it off first. She couldn’t even rake him with her nails and have it affect him all that much… which was one of many reasons they didn’t keep it active all the bleedin’ time. Yeah, it was risky turning the thing off and on and that, but there was a certain allure in feeling mortal, as well. If he hadn’t felt that tug, he’d never have gone after Slayers in the first bloody place, wasn’t it? 

He needed her to draw blood sometimes. And she needed to do it; to mark him as hers. Not to mention, neither of them were remotely willing to give up on the biting, the bonding they held between them. Which meant having a way to render the ring null and void when necessary. Luckily, they had powerful witches about to come up with useful protective and staccato sorts of spells for the revolving door of the Gem’s powers. 

This time, though, it didn’t necessarily signify. If Buffy didn’t want to reciprocate, they’d get along well enough. Or, she could bite him afterward, but one way or the other, he’d need to keep the thing on and open so long as he was biting her, if she were to see it. 

His fingers on her clit and working the way she liked it best, to keep her on edge, he brought his right hand round to her breast, rolled her nipple, slipped down to press against her lower belly, and dragged her in hard to thrust a few times, low and deep. She moaned in that shuddering way that said he might bite her at any time, now, and it would be very, very good for her indeed. And he felt it; that spasm within her, that said now was his moment. 

Right hand still in place, he freed the left, pressed it to her breastbone, arcing her up and back toward his mouth. “Christ, I love you, Buffy,” he informed her, all his heart in his voice as he said it. And struck.

“Ohhhhh, fuuuck,” Buffy moaned, transfixed as always, and her own hand was coasting over his now, to work at her clit as she fell into orgasm, trapped between fangs and cock.

It drove him mad, to feel her like that because of what he did to her, and he couldn’t but drive hard into her a few more times, in lieu of the harder bite he would never give her. And then he was lost as well, and had to find the presence of mind, as always, in the brief moments given him after, to shake his fangs loose, lick her closed, drop his forehead to her shoulder, and remember to breathe; because breathing steadied him, whether it were necessary or no.

Holy fuck, the way she had looked in the mirror in that brief moment; him taking her in every way… It made him tremble to recall it. She had kept her eyes open—an uncommon thing, usually, in the throes. It had only happened a few times before, their first time together being one such memorable occasion, unless he demanded it—lost in shared sensation. He could see her now; staring into the reflective glass, and by it into his eyes. Because she had been able to see his gaze reflected back to her, in that instant; a rarity for them. Been able to watch his eyes while he drank from her, see his rapture and his ecstasy at the taste of her, his awe at the communion with which she favored him. Wonder, still, that she should give of herself to him in that way; and her own joy in it, as she came apart, and let herself be all his. 

It was his miracle, and they both knew it. He had been all hers from the start, and proved it every time she claimed him in turn, every time they played games in bed, every time he was her willing lieutenant in battle, her helpmeet as they rebuilt the infant Slayers into workable cells, and all the rest. /And, act as her escort to asinine things like tonight./ Because none of it mattered. He’d set himself on fire for Buffy, burnt to ashes for her. He’d clearly do anything. Had done.

And in return, she had given him all of herself. 

He was the luckiest man, the luckiest vamp on sodding planet Earth, and any other dimension besides. /I’ll dance with you, Love. There, here; anywhere. Just you show me your card. I’ll hold it; till the end of time./

“I love you, Spike.” Her low murmur was a sated thing, as she gave in to lower herself to the bedclothes; face down and exhausted, for the nonce, against the saffron hotel duvet.

He settled against her, gathered her in his arms. “I know it, pet.” And he grinned as he cupped a perfect breast in his hand, rolled a nipple just to watch her shudder against him. “I love you back.”

“You must,” she muttered, almost inaudibly, the way her face was mushed into the pillows. “Tonight… That thing… Crazy bitches…”

Still grinning, he slipped loose from her. As always, she made a faintly despondent sound at that; an emotion he echoed, but it had to be done if he were to cradle her, and god knew he’d do that, till the end of time, the gift it was for him nowadays. Moved to lie along her body, slip his arms round her. She acceded immediately, snugging herself back against him; letting him curve about her, hold her close so that he could nuzzle in under the curtain of her mussed hair, smell all the scents of her and her satisfaction, and his own, and… Christ, this was everything, wasn’t it? Holding her, being wanted, being loved, smelling them together; knowing they were one and would always be. “You say you love me at the oddest times, pet,” he informed her with a smile, and rubbed his nose into her nape like a puppy. The aromas of her rose around him like a paradise that filled him with a blinding, miraculous array of lush wondrous beauty. “When I’m burning up, when I take you to the adult prom…”

She caught his hand, drew it up to her lips. Kissed the back of it. “I love you I love you I love you, you crazy vampire, Spike William the Bloody Pratt…”

“Alright, stop,” he hissed, pained. “I was just teasing. Christ.” 

“Good. Then shut up and snuggle me.”

So good. His life was so  _ good _ now. “That, I can do.”

They lay there in the afterglow for a time uncounted. He wasn’t at all sleepy, yet, of course, and so in the end he lifted his head over her semi-somnolent form, and contemplated some low-volume telly. “You think these tossers would give me the BBC?”

Buffy groaned, sounding muzzy. “I will  _ pay _ you to leave the TV off and stay in bed.”

“Oh?” This sounded interesting. “How much?”

He could almost  _ hear _ her casting about for something more attractive to him than footie recaps. Which was fair enough, since no matter how low he kept the volume, he did tend to get a bit, ah, audible himself over things like missed tackles and sloppy goalkeeping. Especially when Liverpool might be involved. Or, he supposed, Chelsea or Arsenal, since, official rivalry or no, they were his two other favourite clubs; which did tend to make for rather a difficult match to watch most times. 

“Morning blowjob?” she mumbled finally, sounding wearily hopeful.

Well, that was a bit of alright. “Right, then.” He grinned and leaned over to kiss her lovely cheek. “I love you, Buffy. Get some sleep.”

“Unf.”

Watching her kip in his arms, utterly at peace and safe in his presence, was by far the better show, anyway. “That lot doesn’t know who you are,” he murmured, remembering the way she’d once cradled a little brass plate from some odd, bitty pink umbrella, in her old bedroom at Revello. It had borne an engraved legend naming her the 1999 ‘Class Protector’; something that lot ought to have recalled, since. Maybe, if they weren’t a lot of self-involved bitches, they’d have made an announcement about it once they’d realized their sodding Protector was in attendance; had her up on the dais to let everyone know Buffy was there. If any of them were remotely decent human beings, his girl could’ve gotten another such plaque, to replace the one that had been lost to the hellmouth. 

But they hadn’t, instead mocking her for things they would never understand. Slappers. “They’ll never know.” He ran a light hand down, over her shoulder, her upper arm. “But I do.”

She stirred in her sleep, in his arms… and smiled, effulgent in the low light. Glowing… and his.

And it was everything.

***  
  


**EVEN SCHMOOPIER EPILOGUE:**  
  
Coming in from fetching the mail, Buffy threw down the magazine she’d been holding. It landed on the coffee table with a resounding smack; one loud enough to startle him out of his perusal of the most recent footie statisitics. “Oh, you’ve _got_ to be kidding me,” she exclaimed, her voice rippling with scorn.

Spike blinked away from the telly, wondering what it could possibly be now. “What’s up, pet?”

“It looks like we got out of there just in time, is what’s up.”

“Out of…” he led, at a loss.

She retrieved the cheap, poorly-printed article, tossed it at him.   
  
He blinked at the matte-finished item on his lap for a moment, frowned as the odors of low-rent dyes and high-acid paper assaulted his delicate nostrils. It was, he deduced, some sort of newsletter. He made out the title, ‘The Razorback Hollerer’, despite it being upside-down. /What the bloody.../  
  
Shaking his head, he returned his gaze to hers in confusion.

“Page five,” she snapped, sounding at her wits’ end. “The reunion.”

Still completely at sixes and sevens, he flipped to the appropriate page. He wondered as he did if he’d end in seeing something terribly insulting to his love, or perhaps…

Scanning the article in question, though, told him nothing. There had been a ‘lovely and successful’ reunion for the Class of ’99, et cetera. Not much else to it that he could ascertain…

“You don’t see it, do you.” She sounded accusing; possibly condemning the entire world of her charges. Damn. 

He lifted his head to hers. “Sorry, Love. Must’ve missed the important…”

“Harmony showed. Right after we left.”

He tensed. “Oh, bloody hell.” He looked back to the magazine, did another scan over the lines printed there. “I don’t see anything saying the shindig ended in slaughter.”

“No, of course not,” Buffy snarked. “She wowed everyone, charmed them, she was the poster-child for the Reform movement, she was never dead, they were all wrong about that, they should take a bunch of the other ‘dead’ people off the list…” The irritation turned to disgust, laced with maybe a bit of jealousy round the edges. “Generally she was the hero of the night…” She rolled her eyes with a flourish. “Hail the famous, conquering vampire hero.”

Spike nodded, eyes still on hers as he cottoned onto the problem. “Did they give her an umbrella?” he asked softly.

Buffy froze, glaring; not at him, per se, so much as at the world beyond their control.

/Oh, my love; why do you let such fools make you feel so deeply insulted, when they’re worth one-tenth of you?/ “You will _always_ deserve more than Harm, Love,” he assured her steadfastly. “No matter what they thought at that parliament of fools.” He shook his head. “Consider the fucking source, yeah?”

Buffy exhaled hard and visibly forced herself to relax before she came to him, settled onto his lap. “I knew there was a reason I keep you around,” she informed him, gamely trying to smile. 

Oh, she was still so bloody hurt.

He did a bit of a smile of his own, and tossed the newsletter aside, onto the table to free up his hands. “I know why _I_ keep you around,” he let her know, by way of jollying her into a better mood, and snugged one palm comfortably under her arse. 

She lifted away to fix him with a gimlet glare. “If you’re gonna say something nasty…”

/None of that, now./ Tilting his head, he fixed her with a look filled with certitude. “You’re my protector, as well.” /As she ought to know, by now./

He’d caught her broadside with the unexpected, there. Which meant, of course, that after a second to digest, she took it as mocking, or a joke. Scoffing dismissively, she subsided back to his chest.

“You do, though,” he insisted, and stroked her back. “You protect my heart.”

She stilled again, hesitating for a moment before she spoke. “I’m so glad you can say that now and actually mean it. You don't know what... What that means. That I've earned that.”

“I love you, Buffy. Full stop.”

She sighed in that way that said she was letting it all go, and curled in close. “I love you back.”

As always, his entire being swelled to hear it, soared knowing the ease with which she could say it these days. “And Harm only won that popularity contest,” he pointed out to her, “because they were welcoming home one of their own. She doesn’t make them think of things they’d prefer to avoid, or pretend never happened.”

That earned him a faint chuckle. “Alright, I’ll give you that one.” Another pause, then, “Do you think she’s gonna take over for Cordy, and their new Queen Bee will be a vampire?”

Spike bent to nuzzle her neck reassuringly. “That lot need a leader,” he answered with a shrug. “Lot of brainless nits.”

Buffy kindly tilted her head, stretched a bit in an automatic bid to allow him better access. “Could you imagine, though? The Cordettes as a nest?”

/Madness. And even worse, Harm would do it. She’d bloody well eat it up. Eat _them_ up, make them a whole load of brainless minions./ He didn’t want to think of the kind of stupidity his former might get up to under such circumstances. “Let the world beware.”

“For sure.” By Buffy’s tones, she had forgotten the substance of their conversation. Excellent.

Grinning, Spike set to making her forget everything else. 

**FIN  
**

(I couldn't resist squeezing in 'Harmony the Celebrity', since that's the sort of thing that people at reunions love, and she was definitely one of their own, whereas Buffy was obviously... well, not. And it's only vaguely an inclusion of some comics canon that Harmony was a celebrity later on (though the reasons why she might fake her second death for a while would be getting into a lot more comics canon than is necessary for this lighthearted fic, so we'll leave that out for now). 

Unrelated to anything, but it's completely my headcanon that the Gem should also make a vamp visible in reflective surfaces. Mostly because I think that would be cool. Don't mind me, it's just one of my conceits.  
  


The uncredited song lyrics in there were of course from Bush’s “Comedown”  
Thanks for joining me on this little ride of total and utter schmooptasticness!)


End file.
